Lead Gen & CRM Reviews

Sharp Spring - A great email marketing tool and more!

Comments: SharpSpring is a complete email marketing tool that we use to reach out to clients and market to new leads. We use the automation tools to create drip campaigns and re-marketing campaigns for potential leads. We also use the page builder to build simple landing pages and sales funnels. The contact manager has the ability to mange our list of 30,000+ without any extra costs. It used by both our sales teams and client care teams to help the business grow. As a marketer I use SharpSpring to create campaigns that convert to sales and retention.

Pros:

SharpSpring is a great tool for small to mid range companies looking to build email marketing campaigns. It has great templates which allow you to create emails that look great and are functional sales tools. There are also great automation tools for drip campaigns and re-targeting.

Cons:

The visual email builder can be finicky at times, resulting in editing directly in the code. If you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable formatting HTML code it can be overwhelming. Also, the social media tools are weak. It would be nice if I could schedule and post content directly from SharpSpring.

SharpSpring Great Platform With Amazing Support

Comments: Overall the platform is powerful at a great price, and the team at SharpSpring wants you to succeed, and that shows in their support, courses, documentation, and forums. Not only does SharpSpring benefit Right to Evolve internally, but our clients and the work we do see the benefits as well.

Pros:

SharpSpring has features to create marketing operations and track those campaigns either manually or automatically. Considering I can tie all the potential avenues of a campaign into one spot and see how users interact with is a great win. At a glance, it is essential to read the data and make the right decisions; SharpSpring brings all the data to one platform. It makes work more enjoyable that we can create a single campaign with a list of contacts, email templates, unique forms, dynamic pages, trackable media, automation, and analytics in one spot. Not to mention, once we create this base campaign and all its numerous pieces, I can then quickly use all the parts as a template to do another or a third, and so on. Making it very efficient over time. SharpSpring has a lot of features, but I am thrilled with our CRM, email marketing, ads, funnels, all in one location. All this and the support team have been top-notch every step of the way. I also like to learn myself, which they provide via courses, updated videos, and documents that my team and I can reference.

Cons:

Interface and design consistency are my two significant cons for this platform. Like most, once you know the platform and its interface, you can be very successful. No difference here except that the design process between creating emails, pages, and forms all have their unique process. I believe it would improve user efficiency if the page and email creator, for instance, had a standard procedure and the same layout of tools. The platform has a lot of features with more coming, so you have to know where all the pieces are between the settings, marketing, and sales menu layout.

Sharpspring Has Moved Our Marketing Business To The Next Level

Comments: Honestly, it has been a proper delight working with their team. They are highly professional, friendly, helpful, and just genuinely care about adding value to our business. We're so grateful to have found them.

Pros:

Sharpspring has created a vacuum in my business for the better. Marketing as a service only gets to its final stage once you have a powerful way to leverage the data in your client's businesses to their advantage. We could never do this for our clients until we found Sharpsring. They gave us an easy, straightforward and enjoyable way to offer automated marketing over and above our regular lead-generating offerings - all while making a positive dent in our cash flow from the additional licences we sell. In short - Zebrand is already greatly profiting financially from the experience, as are our clients.

Cons:

Having a few more APIs available out of the box would have been nice, but it has not altered our love for Sharpspring at all.

Review

Comments: Started out fine until we realized that all the report data within SharpSpring was false. We understand that data accountability is an issue in the marketing automation industry as a whole, but SharpSpring is especially terrible at this. The fact that upper management in IT recognizes that email report data is different between what's in SharpSpring email reports, what's in SharpSpring Life Of The Lead, and what's in the exported email report excel list and subsequently admits that none of it is entirely correct is beyond me. The software is meant to provide genuinely insightful feedback to track user activity and potential conversions, however, the development team.

Pros:

Marketing automation features are very helpful.

Cons:

- There is no escalation process for customer support requests that are above a customer support reps expertise - Email report data is BS and one of the heads of IT at SharpSpring admitted it. The report data within SS differs from the data exported; the excel file has duplicate headline titles with different meanings/data; email data is shit - we sent test emails internally and didn't open them and it shows we opened them 3 times in SS and 4 times in the exported report - Life of the Lead is the most valuable data within SS and yet you cannot automate based on any of it - Life Of The Lead duplicates email "opens" and "clicks" based on how many people are in the chain, giving a false view of engagement from customers - Email clicks are a load of BS - it shows that emails were opened and every link clicked within 10 seconds of sending because of spam bots/filters. SharpSpring doesn't filter this data out, so we can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. "Can't we export the excel sheet and do that filtering ourselves?" Nope - as stated before, one of the head IT guys at SharpSpring validated our concerns that the excel email report is indeed, shit data. None of it is usable - Rather than creating a backlog of needed updates and releasing them as a batch update on non-business-hours, SharpSpring product development teams push updates during work hours, breaking crucial functionality for 3+ hours/week, leaving our sales staff twiddling thumbs and complaining.

A Comprehensive Review of SharpSpring

Comments: Overall, I am very pleased with SharpSpring. The platform is incredibly powerful and user-friendly. I have been able to achieve great results with my marketing campaigns and I'm sure that I will continue to do so in the future.

Pros:

SharpSpring is an incredibly intuitive and powerful marketing automation platform. It is incredibly easy to get started and its robust feature set allows for deep customization and segmentation of customer data.

Cons:

The pricing of SharpSpring can be a bit steep for smaller businesses. The customer support can also be a bit slow at times.

A powerful platform, but still has a long way to go

Comments: We use Sharpspring for email automation, marketing automation, lead tracking, reporting, as a CRM, and as a sales tool. It allows us to track contact interactions from first touchpoint through sale. It has been a huge help.

Pros:

My favorite thing about Sharpspring is the ability to track and analyze the entire life of a lead, from start to finish. It allows us to optimize our funnels and nurture prospects from interest to sale. It is a really powerful tool and offers (almost) everything you need for marketing automation from automated workflows to landing pages and forms to email design. I also love their lead scoring.

Cons:

Though it offers a lot of features, it's not all that usable compared to similar products. There are countless small usability issues. Landing pages are pretty difficult to create. Support is usually great – but can at times be entirely unhelpful. Automation has some key features other tools allow. Overall, there are just a lot of features that still need to be added in order to really compete.

SharpSpring: The All-In-One Marketing Automation Platform

Comments: SharpSpring helps me solve my marketing automation needs by providing a variety of features, including email marketing, lead generation, social media management, and comprehensive analytics and reporting with ease and at a relatively low expense.

Pros:

It is an easy-to-use platform that allows me to access and use its numerous features without requiring extensive technical knowledge. I like that the platform is adaptable, I can simply tailor the platform to my specific marketing requirements, allowing me to streamline my marketing efforts and get greater outcomes. also, The reporting and analytics tools are robust and extensive, providing me with loads of data and insights into my marketing campaigns. I value the platform's extensive analytics, which allow me to track performance and monitor lead activity.

Cons:

While the email templates are limited in number and may not be as visually appealing, I don't have any other concerns or complaints about the platform.

Double Take On This One

Comments: Once we hired an outside support person who had to learn the system from ground zero, the system became very useful. Companies

Pros:

Lots of options for the price tag. More marketing automation than what we originally thought this would bring.

Cons:

SharpSpring simply did not have enough support people to assist in the start up of the system.

Amazing product

Pros:

When i used constant contact it was really good. It has everything you need!!

Cons:

NO cons really. For me it had everything

Good value for the cost

Pros:

The ability to embed forms on our website and easily connect it to the Sharp Spring interface was a great tool to provide our client with leads.

Cons:

The cost is a little high for our smaller clients but very reasonable for the features it offered.

Agile tool, great value

Comments: Our experience with SharpSpring has been positive. Great product, usability, and features. Still, there are areas that could use work, including reporting and segmentation, but overall a very good experience so far.

Pros:

Ease-of-use: SharpSpring is very user-friendly and intuitive. It's easy to edit or create an email, set up workflows, and navigate around the platform. Versatile: SharpSpring is an all-in-one tool that you can use for your email program, sales pipeline, CRM, marketing automation, and social media. Customer service: I often frequent the online help center that has a lot of easy-to-understand solutions to many questions that come up. If this doesn't solve the issue, tech support is very responsive and the account management team is also very accommodating.

Cons:

Reporting: There are some basic reports that you can pull from the data in SharpSpring, but I would love to see some more robust reporting overall, especially with the sales feature. Aggregated reports across multiple pipelines, for example, would be great to have access to. Customer segmentation: The platform could use a bit more in-depth customer segmentation features. I sometimes feel the list-building is not as intuitive as it could be.

Economical and POWERFUL Marketing Automation Solution

Comments: SharpSpring is a great tool and I have been so pleased with the automation and resources I have at my fingertips. The have great new features coming out all the time and their customer service and team members are always so helpful and enjoyable to talk to.

Pros:

All the marketing automation is incredible and so easy to use. We have been using the chatbot feature and love it! It is easy to set up and we have it integrated with Slack to make the ability to manage it simple. The email automation and workflow automation makes me day to day job so easy as well. I can set up new prospects in my sales workflow and they get moved down my funnel with just automation. It saves me a ton of time.

Cons:

I love SharpSpring but the overall user interface is not the most beautifully designed one. However, I am getting so many features and resources for an incredible price that this is not a big issue at all. And it really isn't that bad.

Best ROI for Small Medium Sized Business

Comments: We are one of the earliest SharpSpring agencies and users. We selected SharpSpring for its price/performance for SMB companies. We have worked extensively with HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and others - but for small businesses, it is hard to beat the full-stack solution and feature set in SharpSpring.

Pros:

Complete integrated tech stack for marketing and sales that includes the core functionality a business needs to execute full-funnel marketing and sales campaigns and manage the sales pipeline.

Cons:

SmartMail provides 1:1 direct IMAP email, but it would be nice if there was a sales-driven email automation feature for low volume 1:1 emails to prospects.

SharpSpring is full featured, low price, and amazing tech and account support

Comments: I've helped a number of businesses drive revenue with this software and it always drives more revenue for them. Of course, you have to understand how marketing automation works (I teach it at a local business school) and how to use the software correctly but there is a ton of documentation and how-to videos and when that fails, there's always a support person to walk you though whatever you're trying to do and they stick with you. My "customer success manager" will even get on the phone with a prospective client and help with a demo. Just a great company

Pros:

I love the way the tracking is displayed on a timeline so you can see everywhere a prospect went. The built-in CRM and sales funnel pics up where the marketing funnel leaves off and keeps the automation going during and after the sale to upset and resell. The new retargeting and (soon to be) advertising feature is amazing, not only retargeting your visitors but it finds similar customers to target. Overrall, it's really intuitive and easy to use, and I've used many marketing automation platforms over the years. This is the least expensive. No long-term contracts to sign but still has all the features of the much more expensive ones. And the LiveChat feature you can put on your Web site that was just added (at no additional cost) brings a huge feature that other companies charge more than the entire cost of the SharpSpring subscription.

Cons:

No complaints at all. The learning curve wasn't very steep and the price is right. They even have evening support hours.

SharpSpring as our CRM

Comments: SharpSpring listens to its clients and provides an easy to use CRM. When I have a question, they have the answer! I enjoy my CRM experience with SharpSpring.

Pros:

SharpSpring is extremely user friendly. It allows for automation through the entire sales funnel. From its Social Media capabilities to its impactful email marketing feature, SharpSpring improves our productivity from management to rep usage!

Cons:

In doing research, there was supposed to be an automatic integration with Qwilr. We have found that is not the case.

Sophisticated yet easy-to-use platform

Comments: I am using SharpSpring across my entire client bases to generate and nurture leads, manage website inquiries and analytics and monitor and post across social media channels.

Pros:

While the functionality is extremely powerful, SharpSpring itself is easy-to-use. Like any software, there is an initial training period where you have to get comfortable with the platform, but I found it pretty intuitive, especially after participating in the on-boarding training classes. The best thing about the software is the results it's generating for my clients. Our email marketing campaigns have been extraordinarily successful and the reporting functionality makes it easy to demonstrate these results to our clients.

Cons:

I've been very satisfied with the software and don't have any complaints. One wish-list item would be for SharpSpring to integrate with survey tools so I could seamlessly administer campaigns requesting customer feedback.

SharpSpring makes my life easier.

Comments: It's a great platform, and the support team has been very responsive with any questions we've had over the last few years. The onboarding process was great and we never felt alone in learning how to use it. I also like the regular webinars and learning opportunities that SharpSpring hosts for marketers/agencies.

Pros:

The email builder, landing page builder and form builder are all straightforward and fairly easy to learn. There are also help/support articles for pretty much anything I need help with or get stuck on. The "life of the lead" view is helpful to see a contact's interactions with our brand.

Cons:

The email and landing page builders offer a lot of flexibility in layout/design, but sometimes they are a bit too restrictive in terms of moving elements around.

Great Value, Functionality, and Support

Comments: SharpSpring allowed us to enter the email marketing services market in a way that was easy and scalable. Their support is one of the best I've seen in a software company. We have enjoyed the relationship and appreciate the robust capabilities of the platform.

Pros:

We manage a wide range of clients using SharpSpring, and you can not beat the cost and functionality delivered in a mid-high level automation platform - one that continues to evolve and grow.

Cons:

We have really had no complaints with SharpSpring over the past 5 years we have been using it for ourselves and our clients.

1/3 the cost of other comparable platforms - but you get what you pay for.

Comments: No where near as feature rich as HubSpot - but a way better upgrade to MailChmp.

Pros:

Pretty easy to figure out, if you're just using it as a glorified email marketing list building and automation tool. Drag and drop email template manager is easy to use. So is the visual automation builder. Forms can be customized and embedded on websites easily to capture lead information. Out of the box stuff is pretty simple, but you can always get to the CSS to customize everything if you're a developer and want a deeper dive.

Cons:

Support has become horrible since launch. You can never get anyone on the phone, it's become a call back system. If you're an agency and managing client accounts, usually you need help immediately, not by end of day or via a random email. Their billing platform is absolutely ridiculous. They bill your clients directly, and not the agency using the platform saying that the client is the end user, not the agency managing the account. This makes retainer fees or internal billing a nightmare. You'll also have to talk your client into putting their banking routing numbers into a platform they don't understand. If you manage SparpSpring on behalf of your client (like they never login) - Good luck selling it. There is no Facebook connect to capture lead information! They keep changing how you export reports by date range. Annoying if you need monthly reports for your client. Sometimes they work, sometimes they move them. The certification videos and courses are currently outdated after a year of feature pushes. Biggest annoyance - lead history. You can view lead history in a timeline, but if a lead fills out a form multiple times requesting different information on different dates, you can not scroll through that history in the contact view, it only updates the leads custom fields with the latest information. You can only export the most recent custom fields too, even though you can still see the history and different information in the lead history timeline.

Functional Middle Market Software

Comments: Overall, I'm very happy with my expereince with SharpSpring. I think it is a functional tool that is easy to use and it feels good to have check lists and to do's that are easy to set up. I like using this software.

Pros:

I love using this software on a daily basis and using it to manage my leads. As a salesperson, it is challenging to find a CRM that actually works for you, not where you have to work for it. I like the ease of use with the kanban boards as well as the marketing automation for drip campaigns.

Cons:

The mobile app is inoperable and not relevant. Sometimes the search feature is challenging to use- sometimes you need to use the companies name, sometimes you have to use the contacts name. When working in the drip campaigns you have to be really specific about which dates you select.

I love this CRM

Comments: I love that fact of being able to add buyer personas to the contact info and I love the personalization that is used on the Software. Oh and the templates that they provide are great and easy to use.

Pros:

I like that I can do everything in one location. Also, I love the fact that Sharpspring is always adjusting with new things adding the system. If the software does not do something that you want to do. They put in to start working on that method or idea.

Cons:

If you get a hard bounce you can not update that contact with the new info on your own - you have to deal with support and send them the list of changes to be done.

SharpSpring is a Gamechanger for Campaign Tracking

Comments: SharpSpring has been a successful decision for our agency since we got it in 2017. Within the first month it was making a huge positive difference for us and our clients. Their support has been a big part of our success with it and it continues to be an essential part of our digital marketing offering.

Pros:

The biggest benefit of SharpSpring is having visibility into the leads we generate. In the past we could see impressions and clicks and website visits from our campaigns. Now we are seeing the actual leads and being able to follow activity after the initial contact. The added visibility has been an absolute game changer in the value we can provide our clients. I really like the Life of the Lead feature where once you have a lead in the system you can track all their activity in great detail, seeing when they came back to the website, what pages they went to, if they opened emails, etc. We've even had instances where clients claimed they were not getting leads from our campaigns and once SharpSpring was installed, not only could we now provide reports of leads we were generating, but we caught a hole in their customer service where leads we were providing were not getting responses from scheduling staff. So we not only provided reports of the leads we generated, but helped close a gap in a serious customer service issue that was happening.

Cons:

It takes quite a bit of effort to get up to speed on SharpSpring as there are a lot of moving parts. But their support is great and always gets back to us quickly and efficiently to keep us on track.

Great for an agency, but trying to get clients involved is next to impossible.

Comments: We joined the SS family mainly as a means of sending automated drip marketing emails on behalf of our clients, which it does well. We also like being able to see the life of every individual lead directly within the program. It lets us know where our strongest leads lie and where we need to do better. All in all, it gets the job done despite the interface headaches we frequently encounter.

Pros:

There are a lot of features. Almost too many, actually. I can't imagine a company that could possibly use all of them successfully. Regardless, it's nice to know the option is there if a situation arises in which a certain feature becomes useful. My favorite function/feature has to be the lead tracking system. I love being able to see every interaction each lead has with my client's business. The automated actions on top of that in response to customer interaction is the main reason we use the software. It makes drip email campaigns a breeze. I like that it tracks conversions as well (although you have to set it up to do so which isn't necessarily the easiest process ever). All in all, though, it does the job we need it to do.

Cons:

The SharpSpring system is VERY non-intuitive for non-marketers (and heck, even for marketers sometimes). There are just too many ways you can screw up and have to start an email, action, or workflow completely over again. We have several clients who we act as their entire marketing department for and trying to get their sales representatives to use the system the way it's intended is next to impossible. They just don't understand it or even it's purpose, even after we've done training after training after training with them. We've even had SS support do training directly with them, to no avail. I ended up creating my OWN versions of step-by-step tutorials for our clients just to make things easier to understand. The other major drawback is it's way too easy to get "blacklisted" (aka hit spamtraps and honeypots), which I realize is a problem with email marketing in general, but SS doesn't have enough safeguards in place for preventing this type of situation. We have one client who likes to import their email lists in from an on-site wifi sign-on system, which inevitably leads to poor list quality regardless of how many safeguards (email weed-out) parameters we put in place ourselves. Getting on SS's blacklist is pretty much the worst thing that can happen because you still have to pay for the service even though you can't use it until your un-blacklisted, which can take a while. Lastly, their email-design interface is terrible and trick to navigate.

The best way to create an effective email marketing campaign.

Comments: SharpSpring has aided in the efficiency of your email marketing efforts and provided us with fresh ideas for organizing and distributing them effectively. Their analyses aided in our comprehension of the target sample.

Pros:

SharpSpring has a plethora of tools and is always introducing new ones to assist you in creating an effective email marketing campaign. SharpSpring's customizability is excellent, which simplifies all tasks. Additionally, importing and configuring contact lists is a breeze. SharpSpring You may construct unique campaigns by utilizing the numerous concepts and custom templates that it generates, as well as editing and saving them as drafts for future use. You'll receive notifications and data about client replies in real time. This exact approach is easily replicable in subsequent marketing initiatives. I appreciate the ability to conceal and reorganize unnecessary dashboard elements. As a consequence, the business team will be able to more effectively manage and cooperate with the customer database, as well as all stages of advertising, email marketing, customer tracking, contact pages, and marketing job automation, among other things.

Cons:

I encountered no technical difficulties when using it. SharpSpring is a critical component in optimizing email marketing operations for both small and large enterprises. For optimal utilization, additional training is required; SharpSpring developers provide numerous videos and tutorials, and the support team is always available to answer your questions.

SharpSpring is Coming Up The Ranks for Our Automation & Analytics!

Pros:

At first, I was hesitant to jump on board with SharpSpring as I have used the bulkier parent company software from Constant Contact and did not love... I thought this would be similar and I was already familiar with HubSpot's array of marketing automation applications; however, I was a little wrong! I still prefer HubSpot for larger, more profitable or sizable I guess I should say, companies. For my non-profit and social enterprise ventures, however, it is actually very much aligned to the effectiveness as the aforementioned competitor but for half the price. I like that I can get detailed analytics while setting up true smart content triggers for pre-existing materials in a way that makes sense and is strategic for my audience at the right time in the right way.

Cons:

The interface to me feels almost too simplistic as if it is dumbed down, even aesthetics wise. I am big on the look and feel of a system, especially if I'm going to be in it regularly. Also the social media capabilities and deeper, detailed analytics for lead management and creation at the top of the marketing funnel (or circulating flywheel if you're into more "modern times" industry lingo) are not up to snuff in comparison to HubSpot. But in comparison to the rest of the product market, SharpSpring is up there within the ranks!